PARIS, April 23: One of the pillars of the French Jewish establishment, Jo Goldenberg, whose family runs the French capital’s most celebrated Jewish restaurant, Chez Goldenberg, has revealed that his vote in last Sunday’s first-round presidential elections did not go for either of the two favoured moderate candidates, Jacques Chirac or Lionel Jospin, but for far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Goldenberg’s decision to make public his vote for a man, National Front leader Le Pen, usually considered as anathema to French Jews for positions taken several years ago, was understandably criticized by many community leaders, including one who said that “at his age Goldenberg should think of taking a long-deserved rest,” but his position may very well be symptomatic of a trend that’s become apparent in recent weeks in the French Jewish community.

For many French Jews, especially those who migrated to France from North Africa - Le Pen is a blessing in disguise as his xenophobic declarations of recent years have been aimed almost exclusively towards young Arabs and Muslims whose parents hark from the Maghreb countries of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

They are considered by Le Pen and his electors as being largely responsible for the crime wave that has unfurled over France the past several months, and which has been the central issue of the presidential campaign, a theme which Le Pen has promised to develop over the next two weeks as he prepares for his final showdown with President Chirac on May 5th.

Le Pen, in anybody’s memory, has never attributed France’s present social and economic problems to members of the Jewish community, and it is this realization that perhaps best explains the confused - indeed, subdued - reaction by French Jews to Le Pen’s second-place finish last Sunday.

Most of the anti-Le Pen invective that followed Sunday’s vote has come indeed from the French Left, with marches against Le Pen that have taken place throughout France the past two days containing no known Jewish organizations. When spokesmen for the Jewish community have chosen to take a stand on Le Pen, it has usually been quite muted.

Results from the Mediterranean coast, where Le Pen did best in Sunday’s first-round elections, would show that his perceived denunciation of France’s Muslim population as being responsible for the country’s parlous state was largely heeded by all categories of voters in that part of France, which has one of the country’s most important concentrations of Arabs and other Muslims.